Of all the comic book superheroes’ human alter egos, Ghost Rider’s Johnny Blaze has one of the best names: it hints at a reckless insouciance and a thrilling thirst for danger that are both entirely absent from this broadly incoherent film.

An animated prologue tells us that Blaze (Nicolas Cage) made a pact with Satan (Ciarán Hinds) when his father became sick: in exchange for some unspecified form of palliative health care, our hero is now doomed to wander the earth as a bad-tempered motorcyclist whose head is on fire. In this film, which is every bit as deplorable as the Ghost Rider picture Cage made five years ago with a different crew, Blaze must rescue a young boy (Fergus Riordan) who has been kidnapped by the Devil’s team of earthly goons for some nefarious purpose or other.

Spirit of Vengeance was directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, but there’s no trace of the energy, mischief and gleeful nihilism that made their Crank films with Jason Statham such fun – perhaps because of its 12A certificate, or perhaps because they just don’t care.

The film is a drawerful of odd socks: the 3D visuals don’t match up with the rat-a-tat editing, and the occasional gags only draw attention to how wearyingly po-faced the script is elsewhere. “Let’s just say good judgment’s not my forte,” quips Cage at one point, although the line can also be applied in a broader sense.